


Steadfast

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: The Steadfast Tin Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-11
Updated: 2012-08-11
Packaged: 2017-11-11 22:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a soldier, there is always a risk of loss, and sometimes, that loss isn't always life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Steadfast

**Author's Note:**

> There was a post on tumblr: What if Gaston shows back up in Storybrooke…but he’s in a wheel chair cause he has no damn legs!
> 
> This latched onto my brain with a fever and wouldn't let go. I really wanted a chance to do nice-guy Gaston, and this is what happened. 
> 
> Also, re. the war, before anyone jumps down my neck, I never specified a war for a reason. There have been wars ongoing in the Gulf with US intervention since the 1980s which is when Storybrooke would have crash-landed in the real world, so he could have been involved in any.
> 
> And lastly, I was halfway into the story before I realised which Fairytale I had accidentally turned it into. Woops. Subconscious brain at work again.

George Aston didn’t like to be useless. 

He’d always been active. He was his High School’s best quarterback, he could outrun every guy in his year at college, and when it had come to his military service, the field training they put the new recruits through were his bread and butter.

His mom said he had ants in his pants, even when he was a kid.

When he signed up for the army, it came as no surprise to anyone.

George always wanted to serve his country. It came way ahead of anything else. He wanted to defend the land he called home, fight for the American way, make sure that everyone knew he was doing his part to keep the US safe from anyone who would tried to take away the right to be free. He left with a crucifix at his neck, a present from his mom and blessed by the Priest, and a fierce pride in his heart.

Three months later, he was carried into Storybrooke’s hospital, after being flown back from the Gulf. 

He was still unconscious when they brought him in, but his mom told him that most of his buddies from High School had been there, waiting. They came by from time to time, to see how he was doing, but most of them didn’t stay long. He didn’t know what to say to them and they sure as hell didn’t know what to say to him.

His pop sometimes came, along with his mom, but it didn’t feel right. His mom could smile and pretend like everything was okay, but George knew his pop just looked at him and saw all the missed opportunities and the chances he had lost.

Pop was ex-Military. He knew the risks as well as anyone, but no one, no soldier, ever expects their kid to be the one who comes home on a stretcher. 

George was kind of glad that he was so out of it on pain medication for the first month after he got home. By the time he was conscious enough to realise just how bad it was, his friends weren’t visiting so often, and they didn’t have to see him go to pieces. 

George wasn’t a crier. The last time he could remember crying was when they won the college league, and that was the good kind of tears. This was the kind of crying he hadn’t done since he was seven years old and he went over the handlebars of his bike and cracked his head wide open on the sidewalk.

One leg was gone completely above the knee, and the other was shattered so badly that pins were holding it together. 

He stared at the bandaged stump like it belonged to a stranger.

A roadside bomb, they said. Or a mine. The vehicle he was in was ripped apart like tissue paper. One fatality, a young Lieutenant. He couldn’t remember it. Not at all. He remembered heading out on patrol, just like any other day. He couldn’t remember getting in the armoured car. He couldn’t even remember the guy who died.

That was normal, the doctors said. Trauma played tricks on the memory. Maybe it was a good thing, George thought desperately. 

They poured all kinds of crazy medical jargon at him and he sat and stared at his bandaged legs and that was when he started to cry. It didn’t matter about the pain. The pain didn’t mean anything. He hardly noticed it anymore. But now he knew why his pop didn’t stay, why his friends had looked at him pityingly. They all thought he was a damned cripple, and what kind of life could he have like that?

The doctors let him be, when he folded his arms over his head and bellowed at them to get out. They knew the kind of guy he was and a guy like him couldn’t be seen crying, not even when he was broken.

It hurt more than his legs. More than the shrapnel in his chest. More than anything.

He hated it, hated feeling weak and useless and vulnerable, to know he hadn’t even been able to do what he had trained to do. He wanted to serve his country. He wanted to make his mom and pop proud. He wouldn’t have said no to a smile from the pretty little daughter of the florist.

Now, he knew he’d be damned to receive pitying looks, stared at when he went by. Even if he got a prosthetic, he knew Storybrooke was small enough that anyone who saw him would know he was the cripple with the missing leg.

When his mom came in that night, he knew she’d spoken to the nurses. He wished she didn’t have the look on her face, but he let her hug him all the same, stroking his hair. It was getting long, grown out of the crewcut he’d had since he was sixteen. 

She spoke to him quietly, telling him he would be okay, and he acted like it was helping, smiling and nodding, but when she left for the night, it was all he could do not to press and press and press the button for more morphine to be released through his drip.

For the next three days when she visited, he acted like everything was good. It was easier than making her worry, especially when he knew the thoughts that kept creeping up on him in the dead of night. He knew where there was a pistol, and he had never been afraid to die.

He thought he played the part okay. 

When his pop walked into his private room on the fourth day and closed the door behind him, George knew he’d done wrong. Mom knew. 

His pop spoke to him, man to man, asked him if he was thinking of taking a way out. It felt harsh, hearing it on his pop’s lips, just like that. He was their only kid, after all, and even if pop never said it, George knew that he was everything to his old man. He couldn’t deny it, not lying to pop, and pop nodded slowly.

“Life isn’t made to be taken when things get a bit rough,” he said, folding his hands together between his knees. “Sometimes, you’re put in a place and it seems there’s no way out but that.” He looked George right in the eye. “This isn’t one of those times.”

“Pop…”

“You got out of that SUV with your life, George,” his pop said, standing up. “Some other guy didn’t. You want to join him, be my guest, but it would be a hell of a waste.”

“Pop, I’m a cripple.”

His father looked at him. “Atten-hut!”

George’s body pulled him as upright as it could in the bed. “Sir!”

“You have your body, soldier,” his father barked. “You have a hell of a lot more than some other folk out there. You going to throw that away? You going to back away from this fight without ever stepping into the ring? Is that the kind of son I raised?”

“Sir, no sir!” George replied sharply, his throat tight. Pop still considered him worth something, even when he came back blown to pieces.

His father nodded curtly. “Then show me what you can do, boy. The doctors say you could be back on your feet in six months. You going to let a bunch of pen-pushers and quacks tell the fastest sprinter of Delta Kappa Gamma what he can and can’t do?”

“I’ll do it in three,” George said fiercely, feeling really alive for the first time in weeks.

His father nodded curtly. “Prove it.”

It turned out his father’s kick up the ass was much more effective than his mom petting his hair and bringing him candy. He got the nurse to bring him a razor and gave himself a close shave. Another nurse was summoned to get a hairdresser in and the ragged curls that had been bugging him so much were sheared off. 

Without the stubble and the unruly hair, he started to feel like himself again.

His doctor gave him permission to go to physiotherapy to start working on his legs as soon as the pinned leg was healed up enough. It was still in a cast when he was ready, but they agreed that the sooner he started working with it, the better it would be for him.

The physio sessions also involved group therapy. 

George didn’t want to sign up for it, but his doctor insisted it was an important part of the process. To deal with the trauma of the loss of his limb, it could help to talk to other people who had been in the same situation.

The very first session, George decided it wasn’t so bad after all.

He was the only one in a wheelchair. The others were all in various stages of recovery, using prosthetics, or had missing arms. While some little part of him was yelling that they were all handicapped and he shouldn’t be here, he forced himself to look around and pretend like he felt like he belonged, and that’s when she walked in.

George usually didn’t notice girls unless they were right in front of him, but this one was different. She wasn’t too tall, but she was slim as a reed with straw-blonde hair in a high ponytail. He recognised someone who trained a hell of a lot from the way her muscles in her arm moved as she swung a rucksack down onto the floor.

He figured she was one of the nurses stopping by, but she sprawled into the seat beside him, flashing a gap-toothed smile at him. “Hey, newbie,” she said. “First time?”

“Am I that obvious?”

She tapped the handle of his chair. “Always a giveaway,” she said with a laugh. Her eyes were brilliant green. She held out a hand. “Giselle.”

“George,” he replied.

“We better not hang out too much, newbie,” she said with a wink. “They’ll start calling us Gigi.”

“You’re…” It took a second to put the words to use, “one of us?”

She laughed. “You couldn’t tell? Damn! I thought I looked like a club member.” She rolled up the left leg of her jeans, revealing a prosthetic leg with a lace-edged sock. “I’ve been working this baby since I was seventeen. Car wreck.” She nodded to his legs. “What about you?”

“Roadside bomb,” he replied with a sheepish smile.

“In Storybrooke?” Her eyes widened. “Are you kidding? God, those parking attendants are really cracking down on parking violations.”

He grinned at that. “I was in the army,” he clarified. “Outside of Storybrooke.”

“Huh.” She studied him. “I would say ‘you lucky bastard’, but since you’re back here now and in our club, I figure not so much.” She leaned closer, resting her elbow on the arm of his wheelchair. “And don’t believe what they tell you about this gang. We’re not all that cool. We don’t even have buttons or patches or anything.” She gave him a secretive look. “I only hang out here to make the rest of them look good.”

“You’re doing a good job,” he heard his mouth say, then winced. He was blushing, damnit. He hadn’t done that since middle school. 

She socked him on the arm, grinning that toothy smile. “Keep talking, newbie. I like your style.” She got to her feet. “Don’t go anywhere. You’re my first appointment this afternoon.”

“You’re my physiotherapist?”

She put her hands on her hips, eyes dancing. “Were you expecting some big Swedish guy called Sven?” she said. “Don’t worry about it. They all do. And don’t think I’m going to be soft on you, newbie. Ten years of ballet and gymnastics before a karma crushed my footma. I expect hard work.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She laughed. “At ease, soldier boy,” she said, then clapped her hands and called the session to order.

It was probably not exactly a good idea to go into therapy with a crush on the therapist, but George didn’t give a damn. Giselle was like his pop: she wasn’t afraid to kick his ass when he needed it, and she would make him walk through the fire to get the results she wanted.

It was like being back at field training, only he had to start from scratch again.

His pinned leg hurt like hell the first time he put weight on it, and if he thought that was bad, it was nothing compared to the shock of using a prosthetic for the first time. It felt like he’d won gold to stand upright again, but when he looked down and saw the plastic and metal of the leg, he hadn’t been able to stay upright. His breathing was out of his control, and he fell into his chair.

“Easy, newbie,” Giselle said, rubbing his shoulders. Her fingers kneaded at the muscles of his shoulders. “It’s just like a crutch. Just a support.” She leaned closer, pressing her chest to his back. “Breathe with me, newbie. Just breathe.”

He clung onto her arm, but with her help he managed to bring his breathing back under his control, even if he was shaking in her grip. 

“Looked down and it felt wrong,” he breathed raggedly.

“I know, newbie,” she murmured gently. “It gets easier. You’ll be back running track in no time, but you got to let it work for you.” She stood up and kneaded at his shoulders again. “It’ll never be part of you, but you can make it so it doesn’t feel like it shouldn’t be there.”

If she hadn’t been through the same thing, if she didn’t know what she was talking about, he knew he would have called it horsecrap and given up. She had done it, though. She was bright and cheerful and tough, even though she had lost a leg too. She was also freakishly fit, and he could see that she had kept up her sports even after her accident from the way she got him to warm himself up before his exercises.

That was why he kept going back. Soon, he didn’t need her to stand by him with the chair in case his legs gave way. Soon after that, he was only using one of the handrails. The day he walked a dozen steps without support, he almost felt like crying. Not as he had when he first realised how bad his injuries were, but like he had when they’d lifted the trophy.

She was right.

It did get easier, and every step he took, it was thanks to her.

When the doctors finally gave him the okay to go home, after more surgery than he could shake a stick at, he was able to stand tall and walk out the door with his mom and pop, grinning like it was Christmas. 

Giselle was sitting by their car on her bike, her helmet dangling from the handlebars.

“Look at you, newbie!” she said, beaming. “Own two feet and everything.”

“Own one foot,” he said, feeling stupidly proud of that. “Rosebud is holding up as well.”

To help him accept the foot, she had jokingly suggested that he name it, so it felt like something more personal than ‘fake foot’. He’d watched Citizen Kane the night before, and the quote about ‘something he had lost’ struck home, and so Rosebud was named. 

What Giselle didn’t seem to realise was that Rosebud in the movie was name of an object that was linked to a time when the main character was happy. To his surprise, George had never been happier than he was with her. 

“I got you a gift,” he said, groping in his pocket. “In case you were around.”

She shook her head. “Just doing my job, newbie,” she said smiling, looking down at the box he proffered with amusement. “I’m gonna go out on a real limb here and say that it’s not a sports car?”

“Unless it’s one of those grow-your-own-sports-cars, no,” George gave the box a shake. “Go on.”

She accepted it with a roll of her eyes and unwrapped the box. He fidgeted nervously as she opened it, and he saw her eyes widen in astonishment. “George!” It was the first time she’d used his name since their first encounter. “This… this is too much.”

“You helped me walk again,” he said. “You can’t put a price on that.”

She lifted the necklace out. It was white gold, the links more like a string of delicate sequins, and the pendant was a shimmering diamond heart with a core of deep green that matched her eyes. “You’re the first guy who has looked at me and thought I’d like something girly,” she said quietly. She looked up at him with a smile. “Good call, newbie. There are only so many gift vouchers for the sports store that I can use.”

“Uh…” He blushed. “There are some of those in there too. Y’know. Just in case you run out of sports socks or… whatever.”

She laughed and rose on the toes of her good foot to press a kiss to his cheek. “You take care, newbie,” she said. “And thank you.”

He hooked his thumbs through the loops of his jeans. He could feel his parents watching, and it was even more embarrassing than it had been when he was a teenager and he was caught making out with a girlfriend on the porch.

Giselle turned her bike and was about to start walking away.

George’s dad nudged him sharply in the back. “You chicken?”

“Ron!” His mom’s voice was full of reproach, but pop as always kicking up the ass.

“Giselle,” he called after her.

She paused, turning to look over her shoulder with a smile. “Yeah, newbie?”

“You remember what you said the first time we met? About what they’d call us if we hung out more?”

Her eyes danced. “Course I do, newbie.”

He felt like he was flying, his head was so light. “How would you like to be half of Gigi?”

She looked him up and down, flashed that grin at him. “Well, I guess you’re not my patient anymore,” she said. “Meet me at the Marine bistro on main street at seven on Tuesday. I have a table booked in our names.”

George stared at her. “Huh?”

She laughed. “You were always going to ask, newbie,” she said, “I just knew you were waiting until I wouldn’t be arrested for breaking patient-therapist rules.” She winked impishly. “Bring a pink carnation, and I’ll wear something nice.”

“Uh. Great?” She looked at him in amusement. “No! Great! I mean really great!” 

She tapped two fingers to her brow in a salute. “See you there, newbie.” She nodded at his parents. “Mr and Mrs Newbie. Make sure he puts his pants on the right way.”

As she strolled off, leaving George gaping in her wake, his parents stepped alongside him.

“I like her,” pop declared. “She has balls.” He slapped George so hard on the back that he staggered. “Come on, lover boy. Let’s get you in the car before you float off to cloud nine.”

George couldn’t help grinning.

Out of hospital and a date with the woman he was head over heels for.

It wasn’t going to be so bad after all.


End file.
